Feds ramping up testing, aid for bird flu at dairy farms

Federal officials announced Friday they're ramping up their response to bird flu, taking steps to monitor and contain its spread in the United States through direct financial aid to dairy farms and testing tools for dairy workers and cattle.

The aid would expand testing, underwrite costs for farms that provide personal protective gear for workers and compensate farms for veterinary bills and lost milk production. The additional funding amounts to $28,000 per impacted farm over the next four months, federal officials said.

More: Four reasons to be concerned (but not freak out) about the bird flu

Officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture said they hope the new strategies announced Friday will equip farms with tools "to focus on what can be done to prevent the spread ... to protect both human and animal health."

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also will spend $101 million on efforts to test, treat and prevent bird flu.

Humans, at this point, are not in danger, officials said.

"The risk to the public from this outbreak remains low,” said Xavier Becerra, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

However, a spate of recent cases in U.S. cattle prompted widespread concern the disease can pass from species to species.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said testing revealed 42 cattle herds at farms in nine states had been infected. USDA aims to prevent the spread by mandating farms test cattle before herds are shipped across state lines.

"The key now is to make sure that we're restricting ... the movement of these lactating cows so that we ultimately allow the virus to peter out," Vilsack said during a call with reporters.

What is bird flu?

Bird flu is the non-scientific name for avian influenza, a virus that infects waterfowl, turkeys and other birds. If it stays in birds, the main danger is to poultry. Flocks of chickens have had to be killed and eggs destroyed.

The larger concern is that it might evolve to become easily transmissible person-to-person. Bird flu is considered more dangerous than the annual flu because it's a strain humans have never encountered before and it's likely to be highly contagious.

What makes the outbreak so concerning is that the bird flu virus has jumped from birds to other animals, including cows.

This strain of avian influenza, called H5N1, has been around since at least 1997, but it mutated a few years ago to become adaptable to more bird species and mammals. Since then, it's been found in a range of animals, including a bottlenose dolphin off the coast of Florida in March 2022 and 29 house cats in Poland in June 2023.

These new programs to prevent the spread

The USDA's programs will fund dairy farms with infected cows to help contain the spread. The programs include:

? $2,000 per month to offset the costs of equipping workers with protective gear. The farms must participate in a workplace and farmworker study. Workers who participate in the study will also be paid for their time.

? $1,500 for farms that develop "biosecurity plans" to secure the milk supply, including protective measures for people involved in hauling milk between farms, veterinarians and feed truck operators. Milk producers can get another $100 payment to buy and use an in-line sampler to test their milk supplies.

? $2,000 per month to impacted farms that safely heat and dispose of milk. The milk is heated to inactivate the virus.

? $10,000 per farm with confirmed bird flu cases to cover veterinary costs and testing fees. The USDA also will pay up to $100 per month to cover the cost of shipping specimens to laboratories for testing.

? In addition, the government will compensate farms that lost milk production due to the bird flu virus. Cows generally recover from the virus but milk production is sharply reduced after an outbreak, creating economic hardship for affected farms.

Health agencies scale up testing, vaccine development

The CDC will spend $93 million to expand testing and monitoring of the virus, including monitoring people who have been exposed to infected birds and poultry. Monitoring could extend to people in other agricultural settings as well as others such as hunters who might have been exposed to the virus.

A small portion of the CDC funding will be spent to evaluate whether the current vaccine candidate could be effective against the circulating bird flu virus, or whether it's better to focus on developing new vaccines. .

Contributed: Karen Weintraub, USA TODAY

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: As bird flu spreads at dairy farms, feds ramp up testing and aid